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Gold Winner, 2026 Nonfiction Book Awards
Ward’s Island in the East River sits just a short distance from Manhattan, Queens, and the Bronx, yet it has been cordoned off from the rest of New York City. For nearly two centuries, it has been treated as a dumping ground for society’s most marginalized—the unhoused, recent immigrants, and people diagnosed with mental illnesses. Even today, its two psychiatric hospitals, homeless shelters, and residential substance-use treatment program house more than one thousand people, but these institutions are fenced off from the athletic fields and green space of the adjoining Randall’s Island Park.
Exiles in New York City shares untold stories from Ward’s Island, offering a new lens on the city’s past and present from the perspective of the marginalized. Philip T. Yanos—a clinical psychologist who grew up on Ward’s Island—explores the history of the island alongside the history of urban mental health systems in the United States. Drawing on archival documents and interviews with current residents and staff while weaving in recollections of his own childhood, he traces how the island became a place of exile and brings to life the failings of the approach to mental illness that it represents. This incisive and timely book reveals a part of New York City that has long been hidden in plain sight, and it also considers how to transform Ward’s Island for a new era.
— Stacy Horn, author of Damnation Island: Poor, Sick, Mad, and Criminal in Nineteenth-Century New York
In Exiles in New York City, Yanos seamlessly weaves together an exposé on the segregation of marginalized communities, a detailed history of mental health treatment, and his personal narrative of life on Ward’s Island. This tour de force masterfully juxtaposes the stories of those who have been harmed by oppressive systems with heroes of the movement that fought for human rights for those diagnosed with mental illnesses. I highly recommend this book to scholars, clinicians, and community members who are seeking understanding of both historical and current-day institutional dumping.
— Michelle R. Munson, New York University
One thing is clear: deep journalistic inquiry, such as Yanos’ Exiles in New York City, sheds much-needed light on a social morass that has been with us far too long. His reportorial zest, coupled with an inspiring sense of humanity and deep inquiry, is present on every page of this eye-opening book. This is a book about how we choose to live now, even when some of our lives are sequestered, shaded from prying eyes behind a meshwork of barbed wire fence.
— David Brizer
Acknowledgments
1. A Strange Juxtaposition
2. Ward’s Island: A Place Where No One Would Complain
3. Parkland or Institutional Dumping Ground?
4. The French Connection Connection
5. “In Accordance with the Standards”
6. Where Will These Children Play?
7. “We Are New York’s Forgotten People”: The Island Now
8. The Future: What Can Ward’s Island Become?
Notes
Bibliography
Index